We Used to Live Here

 We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, 312 pages.

Eve is a chronic people-pleaser, so when a family shows up politely asking to show their kids around the father's childhood home she reluctantly agrees, despite her misgivings. Everything starts pretty normal, except that the fifteen minute tour keeps getting longer, and the family doesn't seem in any hurry to leave. Soon little things seem to start changing, and Eve can't tell what is her anxiety and what is something much more sinister. The horrors keep multiplying, and Eve is increasingly unsure what she can trust. 

This book was an atmospheric master class. It was deeply unsettling even before there was anything concrete to be scarred of, which did a great job putting me in Eve's head. That being said, I do wish I understood better what was going on by the end of the book. Vaguely unsettling is very effective for building tension, but it's not a very satisfying payoff. This novel was clearly inspired by Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves, and while I didn't find the archival-style material particularly effective in this case, I do still think fans of that book will enjoy this one, as well as fans of the podcast Rabbits. Even feeling slightly disappointed in the tail end, I did still find this a really cool universe-slipping horror novel, and genuinely scary. 

Coup de Grâce

 Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram, 139 pages.

Vicken steps off the metro on his way to his suicide and finds himself not near the St. Lawrence River, but in an incomprehensible structure of seemingly infinite architecture. It is a place seemingly designed for people, but conspicuously empty, and filled instead with a creeping sense of wrongness that threatens to swallow him forever.

This strange, experimental novel is twisty in a way that is frequently hard to follow. It's unsettling and weird, but I also found it very compelling at times. A good spooky season read.